The Distictive Sound of a Theremin

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Part of the video series: How to Build & Play a Theremin

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Summary: Learn how the theremin sound is made in this free instructional video clip on electronic musical instruments.

Views: 3,714 | Tags: construction, make, history, playing, theremin, build, scematic, electronics

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About the Expert

Mark Keppinger Mark Keppinger has worked with electronics for over 15 years, previously at Tektronix, and now currently at a science museum creating and maintaining the elec... read more

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Video Transcript

The Distictive Sound of a Theremin

On behalf of ExpertVillage.com my name is Mark, and we’re going to talk about What makes a Theremin sound special? Something discussed very little in the Theremin circles is what makes the sound special. What we hear is it’s the tubes; it’s the transistors, it’s this and that. What is the physical wave shape? Now if we listen to different sounds that are produced by different wave shapes we can here a distinct difference. A square wave will give a real raspy, buzzy sound, almost brassish. A flute will give a pretty much a sign wave that’s a fairly pure sound without harmonics. A triangle wave will give us a little bit of a stringed instrument sound. Well which one is a Theremin wave? The traditional Theremin was made by beating two frequencies together and we ended up with a signal that looked like an AM modulated signal, which is exactly what it is. Where we have the carrier frequency in the middle and in the outer is the modulated audio signal. Now when we detect that signal through the 6H6 dual diode what we get out of it is half of a sign wave. What we do is remove the bottom half, so now we have what looks like the four humps, but we still have the radio frequency signal in between. So we filter that out and we get a signal that is a full, rectified sign wave or a full wave haversign that is a Theremin wave form. Now the circuitry can do a little bit of clipping, distortion that would give it a little bit more of whatever characteristics desired, but this is a true Theremin sound.